Friday, April 26, 2013

Family Tree Builder 7.0 Software Synchronization with MyHeritage Family Tree - Post 1

MyHeritage released the FREE Family Tree Builder Version 7.0 genealogy software last week (see my post MyHeritage Releases Family Tree Builder 7.0 - New Features are Sync System and Record Matches).  

One of the NEW features in the Family Tree Builder 7.0 software was the ability to synchronize ("sync") with a user's MyHeritage Family Tree - meaning a user can change something online in their MyHeritage Family Tree, or change something in the FTB software, and click on the "Sync" button in FTB 7.0 to make the MyHeritage Family tree data match the Family Tree Builder software data. Heritage described the sync feature this way:

"All family tree information is synchronized, including photos, videos, audio files, notes, sources, citations and other information, except private information such as DNA markers which never leaves the user’s computer. The family history data can now be privately and securely viewed, edited and expanded from any device - the user’s computer, the user’s online family site on MyHeritage – or via the free MyHeritage mobile apps for iPad, iPhone and Android. Users have full control of who can be granted permission to view or add information. The new sync system also provides a backup of the users’ precious data."

I was one of the Beta testers for this feature, and determined that it worked, but did not write about it at the time.  Now I can write about it, and I believe that no other genealogy blogger (other than the MyHeritage folks) have written about it in much detail.  

I want to cover the Sync feature in two posts - this is the first.

1)  To start with, here is a screen shot from my MyHeritage Family Tree (Seaver-Leland Family) for the profile for Samuel Vaux:



Note that his Birth date is shown as "Before Feb 11 1816," his Death date is shown as "After 1880," and his Death place is shown as "probably Marshall, Kansas, United States."

Since I found his birth and death dates on Find A Grave two months ago, I want to edit those dates and places to the correct information.  I could do it right in my MyHeritage Family Tree, but I want to see how it works with Family Tree Builder 7.0 software.  My plan is to enter the data into FTB 7.0 and then try to "Sync" the modified FTB tree with the MyHeritage Tree.

2)  I opened the Family Tree Builder 7.0 software and made sure that the "Seaver-Leland Family" tree file was loaded.  Here is the FTB screen showing Samuel Vaux (maternal grandfather of Abbie Ardell Smith):



I clicked on the name "Samuel Vaux" and the Profile Page opened (on the Info tab):


This Profile Page shows the same information for Samuel Vaux's Birth and Death events.  It also looks to me that it is almost identical to the Samuel Vaux Profile Page on MyHeritage (first screen above).

3)  I need to Edit his Birth and Death information, and I want to add a Burial event also, with a photo of the gravestone.  I clicked on the "Events" tab on the screen above and saw the list of Events I had for Samuel Vaux:


In order to add or edit content, I clicked on the "Add / edit events" link on the line "Events in Samuel's life" on the screen above.  The screen for adding or editing all Facts appeared:


4)  I edited the Birth date, changed that date to "Exactly," then edited the Source citation information, and added the gravestone Photo.  I did the same process for the Death Event, and then added a new event for Burial, with the same information (except for using "After" for the burial date.  Here is the bottom of the Add / Edit Events screen:


I was finished, so I clicked on the blue "Save & close" button and was back to the Person Profile Info tab with the edited and added information displayed:


The revised Birth and Death data is shown on the screen above.  Note that there are three photos of the gravestone on the "Info" tab - that's because I uploaded the photo three times - for the Birth, death, and Burial Events.  I saw no way to link more than one Event to a given Photo.  Maybe I missed something there?

5)  I wanted to see if the changes were reflected in the Family Tree Builder Tree, so I clicked on the "Tree" button (in the top menu row of the software), and saw:


The changes did not show up in the Family Tree Builder tree for some reason.  I looked on MyHeritage, and the changes were in the online tree.

From what I can tell, I believe that, when the database in Family Tree Builder software is linked to a  MyHeritage Family Tree, the editing and adding of content is performed in the MyHeritage Family Tree.

I will look at the actual Sync between the online MyHeritage Family Tree and my Family Tree Builder 7.0 database in the next post in this series.  Will it work?  

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2013/04/family-tree-builder-70-software.html

Copyright (c) 2013, Randall J. Seaver

Disclosure:  I have a complimentary PremiumPlus subscription to MyHeritage, which I greatly appreciate.  This does not affect my objectivity in these reviews.

4 comments:

Steven said...

Last week, Tamura Jones revealed some of the details behind the synchronization in his article about the FTB 7 file format:
http://www.tamurajones.net/ZEDCOM.xhtml
This is very helpful in trying to understand how it works.

Randy said...

The software changed my screensaver to a MyHeritage screensaver. I just uninstalled the software (FTB).

Anonymous said...

I have tried it. Changes made on the "Profile Page" are actually made on the web site (www.myheritage.com).
Clicking the "Sync" button will sync them to Family Tree Builder (i.e. your local tree).

Gilad said...

Randy, when you change something in Family Tree Builder, it does not get reflected in your online tree automatically, but only when you sync. That's a single click in Family Tree Builder. The same applies for the other direction. You can issue a sync manually, or schedule it to occur on a daily basis. When you edit something online the desktop software cannot guess that anything changed online unless it polls the Web very frequently, which is not desirable when there are millions of users. I recommend btw that you edit the look of the software in the Tools>Options>Display and get rid of that ugly yellow background that you may have put in there during some old testing a long time ago.
Go to Tools>Options>Display and click "Restore Defaults".

The screensaver is one of the features loved the most by our users, and it can be configured, turned on or off, via Tools>Options>Screen saver in Family Tree Builder.